Oregon ArtsWatch

TBA:13: She got a beat

Sue Tompkins quietly lays one down for love and TBA

In the audio piece by Sue Tompkins at the Portland Museum of Modern Art, she muses, “What is this I’m feeling?” repeating the question multiple times as she explores the lyrical qualities of this and many other phrases and sounds. The piece is echoed to some degree by the sheets of paper mounted on two walls of this tiny, basement space.

I think it’s love.

Not that I loved the work; I think the work is about love, both as subject matter and object making.

The wall pieces are largely an experimentation in concrete poetry, and as such leave themselves open to not only literal but structural interpretations. We can approach the text pieces as visual art that incorporates poetry or straight text, and if we do so, it is perhaps understandable how one tries to tie the words and more visual aspect together. Some of these pieces are more straightforward than others, which makes that task easier. There is one I will call “Deep” (I did not see any materials listing titles accompanying the exhibition), an obvious choice in that this is the only word on the page and is typed and then repeated in the center of the page from near the top of the page downwards until the platen and keys cannot align for an impression to be made. It is meant to demonstrate depth.

Other pieces are considerably less obvious, yet some correlation, association or system can be hazarded between the words and the image that has been made by typing as well. For instance, where ‘air” is mentioned, the typed grid of vertical lines lie above the text. A wall is referenced in another and one is built with the typing of specific keys.

But there has to be more; otherwise Tompkins’ work would be run-of-the-mill, beginner stuff. Concrete poetry aspires to be rolled around in the mind as much as read or seen as two-dimensional. While it may appear odd to a viewer used to more conventional poetic forms, concrete poetry often invites playfulness from the viewer.

If one takes a cue from the audio piece, these sheets of paper can be read as rhythmic. The marks made by the typing that are not words offer a sort of time signature for added sounds: the word “asterisk” repeated ad nauseam, single letter sounds such as “el, el, el…” or if preferred, a period of silence, the length of which is dependent on how long one’s eye scans the page.

I am drawn by another structure, one perhaps suggested by the artist with the fifth page (if one reads these pieces left to right), for it breaks with the prior pieces that combine words with images, this one solely relying on an arrangement of words.

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Seeing there is a repetition of words on this page and also noticing the same from page to page, I found myself wanting to reconfigure the text from all of the pages into a list, or of you will, one longer poem (foregoing Tompkins’ all caps formatting):

“What is this I’m feeling?” I don’t know about you, but the lyricism that lay hidden in the individual sheets and is now readily visible makes me think I may even be able to dance to it.

Not really much of a surprise. Tompkins, or so goes the chatter on the intertubes, is perhaps best known for being the voice in front of Life without Buildings , a “post-punk” Glasgow art school band (their name a nod to a song by David Sylvian’s early group, Japan) formed in 1999 and disbanded in 2002. To whit:

All that is missing is the instrumentals. The guitar riffs have been replaced with manual typewriter key strokes thereby making these minimal constructions less than far-fetched, and perhaps as formally close to a reconstitution —a concretization— as one can come to her earlier days as a performer. The visuals replace dead air.

To better appreciate this exhibit, it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with No Wave performance from the East Coast that hit its high point in the late 70s and early 80s. One would also do well to become better acquainted with slightly earlier movements such as the Last Poets or the Post-beat, Poetry Out Loud. And long before any of the above movements, without music but still with a strong lyrical element, we must acknowledge Gertrude Stein, plus the dadaists who explored sound poetry and text-based art concurrently with Stein. And before them, Mallarmé.

Even so, concrete poetry and visual poetry, or for that matter any of the word-based genres, remain somewhat on the periphery compared to other visual art forms. Still, there seems to be an increasing number of practitioners in this word-art arena (several Portland artists immediately come to mind). Tompkins comes to concrete poetry with a style that is not too far afield from her music days, which may work to her advantage. For one, she has a built-in fan base. Plus, largely because of the trails blazed by many and varied progenitors, her concrete poetry and spoken word—like her music—are far enough away from pop, but not so far as to be problematic.